macrumors G5

While Apple likes to build on top of UNIX, many, if not much, of the OS level tings are usually restricted even as admin, and saved that for Terminal instead for the 'geeks'

I know the command syntax stems probably from UNIX days, but why is Apple just about 'making it too hard, inconvenient' in the OS to try and discourage the less-techy user, than just pure 'preventing' you do doing something even from command line ?

eg deleting default apps, not going to use a third party app, etc...

I mean it IS their product after all u buy.... they should have control totally. But seems only half way. Why is that ? History?

I don't mean preventing the ability to install stuff, not that tight, but i just mean allowing u to install software, BUT don't give command line to be able to do stuff(fiddle with the OS with switches u may not have full knowledge about etc)

macrumors 6502a

There is nothing restrictive within the Unix subsystem of OS X. Anything you can do on any Linux/Unix flavors you can do on OS X. Of course a lot of the base command line utilities are not installed by default, but there are plenty of package managers for OS X and you can install/compile almost anything you could possibly want.

Now knowing how to use the terminal properly is another story. The "command lines to be able to do stuff" is all there you just need to learn/know it.

macrumors G3

Because the command line is a "necessity" to those who know how to use it and can simplify a workflow, and in various situations that are not limited to techy computer science stuff like the stuff you mentioned. Video, photography, rendering, compiling more than just code, whatever. What usually takes 10 minutes to setup, can turn into a file you right-click and send to encode with parameters that are those that you would setup in those 10 minutes.

Saying that, I'm actually using the Terminal right this very minute with my camera.

macrumors 6502

I do not get this topic.
So you think all the OS is hidden and closed off ?
You can navigate to it in Finder (yes it's hidden, but "Go to folder" you can navigate to /etc /usr /var and so on)
and UNIX is working in same as lets say Ubuntu.
Terminal is essential - as mentioned before.

I think it's that Apple makes it difficult to do things from the terminal when they could just eliminate it entirely if they don't want people using it.

I can see his point, but the solution isn't to just dump the terminal; it's to stop making it harder than necessary to use in the first place. For example, editing pf rules in OS X is clearly meant to be done from a GUI if you look at pf.conf, which negates the best feature of pf--its human readable configuration file.

macrumors G3

I think it's that Apple makes it difficult to do things from the terminal when they could just eliminate it entirely if they don't want people using it.

I can see his point, but the solution isn't to just dump the terminal; it's to stop making it harder than necessary to use in the first place. For example, editing pf rules in OS X is clearly meant to be done from a GUI if you look at pf.conf, which negates the best feature of pf--its human readable configuration file.

Not really a complaint, and also its probably required or part of history/left over what ever u wanna call it. if Apple really wanted you to prevent u from stuff up the OS, or using commands in Terminal, i'm sure they could just take them away...

I guess the same command Apple would take away would also be the same one tech savy uses would so i could see that side.

macrumors member

Moderator

All in all, I have to say that I'm pretty happy with the level of access and abilities afforded us in OS X via the Terminal. I totally understand that the layers above Unix are more tightly controlled, but for me at least I get to do everything I need or want in the terminal

macrumors G3

Not really a complaint, and also its probably required or part of history/left over what ever u wanna call it. if Apple really wanted you to prevent u from stuff up the OS, or using commands in Terminal, i'm sure they could just take them away...

I guess the same command Apple would take away would also be the same one tech savy uses would so i could see that side.

macrumors G3

Not really a complaint, and also its probably required or part of history/left over what ever u wanna call it. if Apple really wanted you to prevent u from stuff up the OS, or using commands in Terminal, i'm sure they could just take them away...

I guess the same command Apple would take away would also be the same one tech savy uses would so i could see that side.

macrumors 603

While Apple likes to build on top of UNIX, many, if not much, of the OS level tings are usually restricted even as admin, and saved that for Terminal instead for the 'geeks'

I know the command syntax stems probably from UNIX days, but why is Apple just about 'making it too hard, inconvenient' in the OS to try and discourage the less-techy user, than just pure 'preventing' you do doing something even from command line ?

eg deleting default apps, not going to use a third party app, etc...

I mean it IS their product after all u buy.... they should have control totally. But seems only half way. Why is that ? History?

I don't mean preventing the ability to install stuff, not that tight, but i just mean allowing u to install software, BUT don't give command line to be able to do stuff(fiddle with the OS with switches u may not have full knowledge about etc)

macrumors 6502

What do they lock down as admin? There are a lot of UNIX commands that require root permissions, but by default I believe that every Admin is in the sudoers file, so it should be a non-issue (if you want to do something that requires sudo and you don't know what that is, it's probably something that you shouldn't be doing. Part of the restriction for the UI not having everything that you can do on the command line is that there are so many command line flags you can pass to a given command that showing them all nicely in the UI is not a good experience (take a look at a man page for something as "simple" as grep for searching, and compare that to the normal search UI)

As far as restricting OSX specific stuff, they have stuff like the CLIs for power_metrics (which backs the Energy Usage in Activity Monitor), mdutil (Spotlight), defaults (settings), in addition to the rest of common CLI tools.

If there is one complaint I have about the OS X Terminal is their use of the BSD versions of most of the tools, which use almost, but not quite, the same flags as almost every other UNIX distribution out there, so occasionally I'll have to figure out the correct flag is on the OS X version.

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